1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a image forming apparatus, a method therefor, and a recording medium for realizing the image forming, and more particularly, relates to a image forming apparatus, a method therefor, and a recording medium for realizing the image formation, which uses the particular characteristics of the ink that the solidified ink is transferred to a material having a higher affinity with the dried ink when the ink comprised of toner particles dispersed in a solvent is used, and that the ink is solidified by removing the solvent in the ink.
This invention is based on Patent Application No. Hei 10-161535 filed in Japan, the content of which is incorporated herein by reference.
2. Background Art
Conventional electronic image forming apparatuses obtain copies by the steps of forming latent electric images on a photosensitive material, developing latent images by using toner, and fixing by heating or pressing after transferring the toner images to transfer materials such as paper.
Such an image forming apparatus based on the electrophotographic technique uses the principle that the solidified ink is transferred to a material having higher affinity to the ink when an ink comprised of toner particles dispersed in a solvent is used, and the ink is solidified by removing the solvent. This ink is characterized in that it can be solidified by removing the solvent in an environment having temperatures of more than 10.degree. C.
However, inks used for the conventional image forming apparatuses have the drawbacks that the bonding strength of the toner image to the paper is low, and that blocking, which is the phenomenon of the image surfaces sticking to each other, is likely to occur.
A cross-linking of the molecular structure of the ink may be effective for improving the bonding strength of the toner image with the printing paper. However, cross-linking of the ink generally increases the solidification temperature of the ink, which causes problems in that it becomes difficult to solidify the ink when the solvent of the ink is squeezed by a roller and the developed images are deformed or even flown off the paper.
The objects of the present invention are to solve the above problems. That is, one object is to increase the bonding strength of the developed images to the printing paper, and another object is to improve the anti-blocking property of the image surfaces.